Category Archives: Drink & Eat

Last Halloween, I wrote an article on Alcohol Professor about haunted bars in New York City. Well, gather ’round the campfire, children, because I’ve more macabre drinking tales yet to tell. Only this time, we’re going global. Son of Booooozy Tales: Haunted Bars Go International looks at haunted pubs, bars, and watering holes in New Orleans, Seattle, London, Wales, Dublin, Edinburgh, and Sydney. Be ye fairly warned. The person sitting next to you at the bar might have been there since the 1800s.

My latest Frolic Afield at Alcohol Professor takes me far afield indeed, through New England, past Halifax, and up into the wild north of Nova Scotia.Malt & Moose is the tale of this journey most epic, a journey that included inadvertent weapons smuggling, attractive border guards, grazing moose, and of course whiskey since the point of the trip was a visit to Glenora, Canada’s first single malt whiskey distillery.

In another Frolic Afield over at Alcohol Professor, I take a look at the growing trend of “single grain” whisky. With the Grain explains what single grain whisky is and how it’s different from single malt, then looks at some of the brands whisky distillers are pushing onto the market in their ever more aggressive attempts to steer people away from single malt whisky with an age statement.

My latest Frolic Afield over on Alcohol Professor is an account of my September 23rd Mabon Feast. Of course, one celebrates Mabon with offerings from one’s bountiful harvest of grains, including barley, rye, and corn. Granted, in Pairing Bourbon and Cheese With Four Roses, my grains have been distilled into Four Roses bourbon and paired with a selection of French cheeses, but I assume that’s fine with the goddesses and forest folk.

A new Frolic Afield, back on Alcohol Professor and back in the state of my birth. This time around, we’re visiting Jim Beam’s American Stillhouse. The Jim Beam distillery used to be a waste of time, little more than a trip to the gift shop and nary a glance at the actual business of making the world’s most popular bourbon. In 2012, Beam substantially revamped the experience, and the result is now one of the must-see stops on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.

The shift of the whisky market toward whisky with no age statement on the label is causing all sorts of controversy. In my latest Frolic Afield at Alcohol Professor, I throw myself into the debate.Blinded By the Truth is an account of Diageo’s “Blind Truth About Aging Whisky” seminar at Tales of the Cocktail, a tasting meant to illustrate that a whisky’s age and its quality are not dependent upon one another. However, partway through, it became pretty obvious that the tasting was designed to stack the deck in favor of the point the presenters were asserting.

I spent the better part of a week in New Orleans, seeking out voodoo hotspots and attending Tales of the Cocktail. My latest Frolic Afield for Alcohol Professor is about one of the many (very good) seminars I attended during that week. Bartender, There’s an Anchovy In My Drink is a look at the Italian Futurist movement and the futurist opinion on cocktails. And yes, one of the cocktails — or polibibita — had an anchovy chunk floating in it.

A new frolic afield back over at Alcohol Professor. All Hopped Up on Whiskey is a look at the small but interesting trend of distilling finished beer into whiskey, or integrating the use of hops into the whiskey distilling process — not to mention the notion of seasonal whiskey like seasonal beers. I also talk to the guys from Sons of Liberty Distillery in Rhode Island and Darek Bell from Tennessee’s Corsair Distillery.

I have a new Frolic Afield up at my usual corner on Alcohol Professor. In a rare moment of timeliness, The Bar that Launched Pride is a look at the history of the Stonewall Inn and how a scummy shithole of a bar that blackmailed its gay customers became the rallying point for and birthplace of the LGBT rights movement in America.

Where does our Frolic Afield take us to this week? To Bardstown, Kentucky, by way of Alcohol Professor. Bottled History is a look at my visit to the Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History. From bottles of old Coon Hollow to a still they claim belonged to George Washington, it’s a fascinating — and free — look at the history of my favorite tipple told by an amazing assortment of artifacts.